A Pen that Alerts You When You Make Writing Errors

Monday, 11 February 2013 07:34
Pranav Sinha

User Rating: / 0PoorBest

We have become dependent on digital technology quite a bit and now we can rely on it for mundane things like checking our grammar and spelling too. You can now pick up a garden variety ballpoint pen and you will be associated with a built-in dictionary.

The manufacturers of the `Lernstift’ digital pen are taking handwriting into this new century a step ahead by making the pen to vibrate and alert the writer when he or she makes grammar or spelling errors or even when he or she is churning out poor penmanship.

`Lernstift’ means `learning pen’ in German. It is currently being made in Germany and it is going to be powered by Linux. It will be made up of smartphone electronics in aluminium or a thermoplastic body. It will use motion sensors to trace the movement patterns and identify errors. The pen will start vibrating to keep the writer alerted on any mistakes in spelling or grammar.

This `Lernstift’ pen will be functional in dual modes. One is the calligraphy mode and the other is orthography mode. The pen will alert on mistakes with penmanship in the calligraphy mode and it will identify grammatical and spelling mistakes in the orthography mode. In the calligraphy mode, it will vibrate only once for the alert and in the orthography mode, it will vibrate twice. The pen will also be able to function as a standard ballpoint one.

The `Lernstift’ pen will be ready by the middle of this year with the word recognition and motion sensors system. The second generation run of this pen, which is expected in a year’s time from now, will have a pressure sensor which will help the children in learning how to hold a pen and how much pressure to apply on it when writing. Another area of its development is a network module that will enable the pen to connect to Wi-Fi and share data. The pen is likely to be priced around one hundred and twenty dollars.